A raucous frat boy comedy that doesn't make any effort to hide its influences (Animal House, Bachelor Party), Old School may be terribly unoriginal and slight, but there's a certain gullible charm about the misadventures of a trio of emotionally constipated men. Mitch (Wilson) is a property lawyer whose world is turned upside down when he walks in on his girlfriend engaged in a threesome. Heartbroken, he rents a house near his old college campus, where his two best buddies Beanie (Vaughan cranking up the sleazy charm) and Frank (Ferrell) were also students. Married and respectable, both Frank and Beanie see Mitch's new house as the perfect means to recapture their fast disappearing youth. Establishing a fraternity, the trio's brave attempts to ingest copious amounts of beer and ogle jail bait are threatened by the over zealous dean of the college (Jeremy Piven).
A robust, energetic comedy, Old School may not stand up to much scrutiny, yet there's a richly vein of idiotic humour pumping through the movie. Although women are sold a little short and the director doesn't go the extra yard to make Old School really interesting, there's enough material here (albeit recycled) to make this big, dumb movie work. For the most part, anyway.
